The Pistachio Girl

I'm that kid that car sick every single time I boarded the back seat of my parents' mini van to drive the 45 minutes to my grandparents' apartment on the south shore of Boston. Every.single.time. When I was real young, I remember my father pulling over three lanes of traffic on the southeast expressway, masshole drivers with heavy elbows on their horns, so that I could open the door and puke amidst shredded tire pieces and cigarette butts. My grandfather was always ready for my with chalky pink canadian mints, my face flushed and sweaty as my sisters walked ahead, complaining of another trip made longer by a nausea no amount of drama bean (what I called "granma bean" until I was 11 because I really thought it was made for traveling to grandma's house and misheard my mother's pronunciation) could quell.

Because of this, it's amazing I ever even had an impetus to travel. I sort of accidentally began studying German in high school (a long story that has to do with a cross-state move and school transfers) and just as circumstantially ended up in a German club (I later found out that our young and eager teacher recruited for lunchtime meetings all of us who seemed friendless and wayward). And so I was bit by the travel bug at 16.

So armed with gum, mints, gingerale, and a healthy supply of Nirvana and Alanis CD's for my walkman (remember those, kids?) I boarded my first transnational flight. While my friends around me read and napped, I could do neither, the pulse of nausea beating like a drum in the back of my throat. So I took to people-watching--limited in possibility from the strapping of my airplane seat. And maybe because I watched her, on and off for seven hours, she is sticky in my memory.

And by she, I mean not her physical body. I actually don't remember much about what she looked like. But I remember her movements. She had what looked like an exam book balanced on her right knee (the knee farthest from me), and her left hand poised as if she were a statue holding a small globe. In her left hand were pistachio, something I had never seen anyone eat before. With her palm full of nuts, I watched as she moved with the single stroke of her thumb a nut. Upwards to the tips of her middle and pointer fingers. There, she would press the nut between her two fingers and her thumb, spreading her two fingers apart gently in the breaking of the shell. Then, meat loosened, she would bring her hand to her mouth, fingers and thumb in delivery. She would then use her fingers to push the shell back into her palm, simultaneously sweeping her thumb in search of a fresh pistachio.

And this was done absent-mindedly as she turned pages with her other hand.

And I thought, "That's what I want to look like when I eat."

On Thursday morning, I boarded a megabus, one of a dozen this year, and took my seven hour trip to Chicago. I remembered this woman, and her one-handed tricks, and bought a bag of dry-roasted pistachios at the gas station stop. I briefly thought, "How many Weight Watchers points are these?" but the points left me as a doled out quarters from the bottom of my purse and payed the cashier. Something tells me the salty memories are worth the over-draft.